A Deluge of Awareness, Concern and Opportunity

Are you ready to rise to the Challenge or what? This severe drought has brought a deluge of awareness, concern and opportunity. Now we need YOU to take action and amplify your impact by registering your actions and inspiring friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Inspire, organize and mobilize! Feel and be fed by the vital power of soooo many heads, hearts and hands aligned in acts of care, conservation and celebration. Celebration of what?

Of being alive in this rare and precious planetary moment and being a part of this incredible movement to increase the richness and resilience of our lives, our homes, neighborhoods and communities. In the last few weeks I’ve traveled around Northern California to support communities in launching their Community Resilience Challenge. The day before Sonoma County launched our Challenge, we collaborated with the City of Oakland, Bay Localize and the NorCal Community Resilience Network to co-launch both Resilient Oakland which is part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Initiative and the East Bay Community Resilience Challenge. Last week I spoke with a 120 U.C. Santa Cruz students to initiate the first university-based Community Resilience Challenge. Before that in February we taught a workshop in Humboldt County to get the north country launched, and there’s interest in Napa, Sacramento, the Sierras and beyond.

It can also be easy to get immobilized by the scale of the issues we face. Communities, farms and endangered fish are running out of water. Less rain has led to an increase in the dangerously unsustainable pumping of groundwater. Add in hotter temperatures resulting in decreased soil moisture, and the risk of fire is exacerbated. While the first ever-state mandate of 25% increase in water conservation applies to urban water use, there are concerns about why there are no conservation mandates for agriculture, which uses 80% of our state water supply. Then there’s the fact that California is a top producer of food in the country and world, is one of the world’s largest economies and has 38 million people, many of whom live in an arid landscape. It can all be a lot to process and to try and understand without getting overwhelmed and disempowered. While it’s important for us to get educated about these big, complex issues, it is also important to just take action with the best of our knowledge and ability.

A corner stone of more resilient communities are resilient individuals and households who are connected to their neighbors and locally engaged in issues that matter. Take action to treasure every drop of water, to live what you value and to grow your positive influence. Inspire others to do the same, engaging your neighbors, schools, churches, businesses and civic agencies. Then when we align our actions, our projects, groups and networks around common goals like in the Community Resilience Challenge this further builds our capacity to affect significant change from front yards and neighborhoods, to city, county, region, state and beyond. But it all starts with you and the small but important ripple from your daily actions. Then you join with others and together we grow a movement of simple solutions that build community and self-reliance and are rooted in a reverence for life.